In a campaign there is a Yuan Ti Paladin oath of the ancients and they aren't fazed by anything. They have an AC of 19 and their lowest saving throw is a +5, not to mention they have Adv against saving throws from magical effects and all damage they receive from spells is halved (level 8 Aura of Warding). Immunity to poison and the poison condition. They can reach even higher Ac if they use spells or get better armor. Usually the tactic to a high Ac target is to hit them with saving throws and vice versa, but this paladin seems to have it all. Any advice on what I can do?
Use monsters with special abilities (and therefore not spells). 19 AC even with shield of faith is not insurmountable. My paladin has AC 22 with SoF and he still gets hit all the time. If you throw a lot of smaller monsters at him, there will be a lot more attack rolls and therefore some of them will also crit. Set traps with a high DC in his weakest stat, use surprise, use invisibility or darkness to give disadvantage. You can also augment your monsters with higher hit/spell save DC (they don't have to be right from the book). You can also ignore the paladin and go hard after the rest of the party. This will force the paladin to maybe react and heal instead of hitting hard like he wants to. Basically just be creative with your monsters.
There are a number of creatures that have abilities that aren’t actually magical. You could also use effects that deal half damage on successful saves. Most breath weapons are examples of this, but there are more. It’s quite interesting that the lowest save bonus is a +5 considering point buy or standard array attribute options. If the players rolled for stats, then this is pretty much what happens when bounded accuracy is ignored. Another option could be to use more checks in the game that have different results, but making use of ability checks will have to be presented in a different way as it’s usually the players choice to make the check in the first place. Unless they are subjected to a contest. You could introduce terrain hazards that damage or slow down the party, it may squeeze out another round or two of combat if positioning becomes difficult.
all that being said this needs to be carefully thought off. You want to provide a challenge to the party, including the paladin. You don’t want to raise the difficulty of the monsters entirely as that just makes the rest of the party more likely to fail or get hurt when they’re targeted. You also don’t want to invalidate the players choices. If they wanted to have a PC with decent armor and great save potential, and have dedicated time and resources to make those choices then there should be some reward for it.
There are a number of creatures that have abilities that aren’t actually magical. You could also use effects that deal half damage on successful saves. Most breath weapons are examples of this, but there are more. It’s quite interesting that the lowest save bonus is a +5 considering point buy or standard array attribute options. If the players rolled for stats, then this is pretty much what happens when bounded accuracy is ignored.
Paladins get that aura that lets them and all allies with 10 feet of them add their Charisma mod to all saves, and with a +2 racial bonus to Charisma they could easily have a Charisma of 20 by 8th level.
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Find your own truth, choose your enemies carefully, and never deal with a dragon.
"Canon" is what's factual to D&D lore. "Cannon" is what you're going to be shot with if you keep getting the word wrong.
Monsters like Carrion Crawler can be useful. This one might have a low CR, but it's an example. Even at that CR, +8 to hit. This one also relies on the poison which the Paladin seems immune to, so maybe search a different option. Quickling also has incredibly high to-hit considering their low CR.
You could also go on the defensive, putting two tanks in front of each other. Will-o'-Wisp looks weak, but it's rather hard to kill. If you REALLY want to TPK with low CR monsters, pair it with a Banshee. Banshee reduces to 0 HP, Will-o'-Wisp confirms the kill. Both have great defensive powers too.
Another option is to put a timed challenge. Maybe the goal of the fight isn't to kill all monsters before they kill you, but rather kill all monsters before X happens. Or guard some weak NPC. Things that mean that it doesn't matter if the Paladin has AC of 19, 2000 or 0. Getting hit is not the problem in this encounter.
Last option is an enemy which relies on checks. Maybe there's a giant on a narrow bridge, shoving everyone that tries to cross down a chasm. Maybe the foe is an illusion that is only defeated when the party makes an Investigation check to realise that it is an illusion. The illusion can't deal damage, but you can just say it fails to hit that high AC. When it is hit, find a way to subtly hint that something is wrong without giving it away immediately. What's the risk to the party then, if the illusion deals no damage? They might spend resources on it and be weakened when they reach the ine who created the illusion. Someone they should be able to beat easily with enough resources, but a hard encounter otherwise.
So first up, what level is this character? They must be 8+ but these things you're describing will be more or less relevant at different levels.
19 AC really isn't that high. I played an Eldritch Knight who had AC 21 at level 6. I'm going to assume AC 19 is Plate plus Defence fighting style so they can use a 2h weapon.
I'm also going to assume that this paladin is level 8. By that point your party can easily be facing off against monsters that have +10 to hit, and should have multiple attacks, with save DCs of 15+.
However, the player has clearly made choices - class, race, stats, armour - that are making them highly durable. Part of their play experience should be that they don't take a lot of damage. If you build a tanky melee character then they ought to be tanky. My old DM used to get around my AC21 character by simply ignoring him, taking the opportunity attack, and running creatures around him. It didn't make sense for them to be ignoring a hammer wielding fighter in their faces, but he basically gave up on making melee attacks against me (especially as I could up my AC to 26 with shield (and usually had protection from evil and good up for disadvantage. This was deeply annoying for me as a player. I'd built my character around being the party tank, and the DM effectively took the role away from me by deciding to make intelligent monsters act irrationally. Since I also had absorb elements, the only time he was hitting me was with effects like psychic damage. [Side note: because the DM gave up on attacking me, I ended up always having those spells available since I didn't need to burn my spell slots. If he'd put the focus intensely on my EK, he could have burned through my resources, making me more vulnerable in the next encounter].
If your player wants to be super tough and durable then don't try to get around it to damage him. Lean into it.So it's hard to hit him? Put more monsters into the encounter and let him tank them. Put in an additional caster monster so that it can throw wasteful spells into the yuan-ti resistances. If your PC is proving tougher than the standard CR will allow this is normal. CR is badly calculated, all the monsters have half the hit points they need (look at how to calculate CR in the DMG, and then look at monsters in the MM and you'll find they're almost all wrong).
The bane of most Paladins is lots of foes, preferebly at range and/or flying. A dozen kobolds that run around peppering them with arrows and then retreating will cause enough problems. Flying enemies or enemies that aren't slowed by the terrain is also useful. Paladins aren't good at ranged combat and they are also not as good against multiple opponents so this should be at least a nuisance to the Paladin.
With non-magical Plate armor and a non-magical shield, you'd have an armor class of 20. Their armor class is lower. They don't have magical armor at 8th level?
As far as doing damage to them goes, have a monster that flies pick them up and drop them from a height. There's no save for falling damage. They are probably wearing armor of some kind, so drop them into deep water instead and see if they can swim.
My old DM used to get around my AC21 character by simply ignoring him, taking the opportunity attack, and running creatures around him. It didn't make sense for them to be ignoring a hammer wielding fighter in their faces, but he basically gave up on making melee attacks against me (especially as I could up my AC to 26 with shield (and usually had protection from evil and good up for disadvantage. This was deeply annoying for me as a player. I'd built my character around being the party tank, and the DM effectively took the role away from me by deciding to make intelligent monsters act irrationally.
I have to disagree that your DM decided to make intelligen monsters act irrationally. An intellignet enemy that knows any attacks against you are unlikely to succeed will want to take down the wizard that might be doing a similar abount of damage but can be taken down with one or 2 swipes of the sword, after taking care of squishy targets can then take on the paladin when they only need to worry about his attacks.
An effective tank isn't a character that is hard ot hit / or hard ot kill, it is one that also draws the attacks to them. In many MMORPGs there is some sort of taunting mechanic. D&D doesn't have such a system so effective tanking i s probably harder but there are things like you can do for example
Grappling prevents creatures moving away from you if successful (on thir turn they can try to escape again but if they succedd they have used their action so they could move to the squishy but not attack them
Shoving knocks a creature prone so they only have half their movement next turn
Sentinal would prevent them taking the op attack and moving to the squishy (if you hit) leaving them with the option of either attacking you or making a ranged attack obn the squishy at disadvantage (and with cover if the squishy is ably to take it).
Using the environment, if you open a door and find a load of enemies you can stand in the doorway with the bad guys on one side and the squishies on the other, the bad guys can not pass though your space to get to the squishies.
In a campaign there is a Yuan Ti Paladin oath of the ancients and they aren't fazed by anything. They have an AC of 19 and their lowest saving throw is a +5, not to mention they have Adv against saving throws from magical effects and all damage they receive from spells is halved (level 8 Aura of Warding). Immunity to poison and the poison condition. They can reach even higher Ac if they use spells or get better armor. Usually the tactic to a high Ac target is to hit them with saving throws and vice versa, but this paladin seems to have it all. Any advice on what I can do?
7 living bigby's hands (reminder that creatures manifested by spells aren't spells - Aura of Warding does nothing against the beast summoned by Summon Beast, so it should do nothing against the hand; same thing for the yuan-ti advantage on re-rolls).
D&D does have a "taunting mechanic" of sorts. Fighters with the Battle Master subclass get it, and you can get a somewhat lesser version that doesn't scales with leveling with the Martial Adept feat.
Goading Attack
When you hit a creature with a weapon attack, you can expend one superiority die to attempt to goad the target into attacking you. You add the superiority die to the attack’s damage roll, and the target must make a Wisdom saving throw. On a failed save, the target has disadvantage on all attack rolls against targets other than you until the end of your next turn.
D&D does have a "taunting mechanic" of sorts. Fighters with the Battle Master subclass get it, and you can get a somewhat lesser version that doesn't scales with leveling with the Martial Adept feat.
Goading Attack
When you hit a creature with a weapon attack, you can expend one superiority die to attempt to goad the target into attacking you. You add the superiority die to the attack’s damage roll, and the target must make a Wisdom saving throw. On a failed save, the target has disadvantage on all attack rolls against targets other than you until the end of your next turn..
Goading attack is another way in D&D a tank can reduce the chances of his squishy friends getting hurt (either because they attack the paladin or they attack the squishy with disadvantage, in a similar way to sentinal does (with sentinal they can attanged ranged at disadvantage with goading attack they can go to them and hit them melee at disadvantage)
There are quite a few others
An armorers thunder gauntlets,are similar to goading attack
an ancestral barbarian's is build around being an effective tank
ancestral protectors, are similar in forcing disadvantage but also reduces the damge they take.
spirit shield reduces the damage they take if they do get hit
vengeful spirits both deters the enemy to attack people other than you (because they rishk taking damage) and reduces the damage if they do
Cavaliers have unwavering mark and hold the line
A Paladin only really has compelled duel that that has quite a few restrictions, most notably if your friiends attack the target the effect ends.
Thinking about it I think there is a space for an "Oath of Protection" Paladin sworn to protect his colleagues in battle.
My old DM used to get around my AC21 character by simply ignoring him, taking the opportunity attack, and running creatures around him. It didn't make sense for them to be ignoring a hammer wielding fighter in their faces, but he basically gave up on making melee attacks against me (especially as I could up my AC to 26 with shield (and usually had protection from evil and good up for disadvantage. This was deeply annoying for me as a player. I'd built my character around being the party tank, and the DM effectively took the role away from me by deciding to make intelligent monsters act irrationally.
I have to disagree that your DM decided to make intelligen monsters act irrationally. An intellignet enemy that knows any attacks against you are unlikely to succeed will want to take down the wizard that might be doing a similar abount of damage but can be taken down with one or 2 swipes of the sword, after taking care of squishy targets can then take on the paladin when they only need to worry about his attacks.
An effective tank isn't a character that is hard ot hit / or hard ot kill, it is one that also draws the attacks to them. In many MMORPGs there is some sort of taunting mechanic. D&D doesn't have such a system so effective tanking i s probably harder but there are things like you can do for example
Grappling prevents creatures moving away from you if successful (on thir turn they can try to escape again but if they succedd they have used their action so they could move to the squishy but not attack them
Shoving knocks a creature prone so they only have half their movement next turn
Sentinal would prevent them taking the op attack and moving to the squishy (if you hit) leaving them with the option of either attacking you or making a ranged attack obn the squishy at disadvantage (and with cover if the squishy is ably to take it).
Using the environment, if you open a door and find a load of enemies you can stand in the doorway with the bad guys on one side and the squishies on the other, the bad guys can not pass though your space to get to the squishies.
.
Your points are illogical on multiple levels.
Sentinel should not be a key part of every melee class's build, but it is certainly the best way to keep them near you. But it's at best one creature. If having high AC and defences somehow necessitates a specific talent to make them relevant, the DM is doing a bad job.
Moreover, monsters (and players) should not be thinking in terms of hit points. To a monster, every creature can go down to one swing of the sword. They have no idea how durable anyone is, just as the players don't know monster hit points. To metagame this way, either for the DM or the players, is ultimately going to give a poorer experience. "Take out the casters" is perfectly viable, unless there is a knight in your face dealing you two hits a turn with a warhammer.
An effective tank isn't a character that is hard ot hit / or hard ot kill, it is one that also draws the attacks to them. In many MMORPGs there is some sort of taunting mechanic. D&D doesn't have such a system so effective tanking i s probably harder but there are things like you can do for example
If they draw the enemies to them, and are not hard to hit or kill, they are not an effective tank.
You're essentially suggesting that unless a high AC, high saving throw character spends their time grappling and shoving then all the enemies should run past them and attack someone else. This is the point where you should be playing an MMORPG on a PC rather than an RPG.
My old DM used to get around my AC21 character by simply ignoring him, taking the opportunity attack, and running creatures around him. It didn't make sense for them to be ignoring a hammer wielding fighter in their faces, but he basically gave up on making melee attacks against me (especially as I could up my AC to 26 with shield (and usually had protection from evil and good up for disadvantage. This was deeply annoying for me as a player. I'd built my character around being the party tank, and the DM effectively took the role away from me by deciding to make intelligent monsters act irrationally.
I have to disagree that your DM decided to make intelligen monsters act irrationally. An intellignet enemy that knows any attacks against you are unlikely to succeed will want to take down the wizard that might be doing a similar abount of damage but can be taken down with one or 2 swipes of the sword, after taking care of squishy targets can then take on the paladin when they only need to worry about his attacks.
An effective tank isn't a character that is hard ot hit / or hard ot kill, it is one that also draws the attacks to them. In many MMORPGs there is some sort of taunting mechanic. D&D doesn't have such a system so effective tanking i s probably harder but there are things like you can do for example
Grappling prevents creatures moving away from you if successful (on thir turn they can try to escape again but if they succedd they have used their action so they could move to the squishy but not attack them
Shoving knocks a creature prone so they only have half their movement next turn
Sentinal would prevent them taking the op attack and moving to the squishy (if you hit) leaving them with the option of either attacking you or making a ranged attack obn the squishy at disadvantage (and with cover if the squishy is ably to take it).
Using the environment, if you open a door and find a load of enemies you can stand in the doorway with the bad guys on one side and the squishies on the other, the bad guys can not pass though your space to get to the squishies.
.
Your points are illogical on multiple levels.
Sentinel should not be a key part of every melee class's build, but it is certainly the best way to keep them near you. But it's at best one creature. If having high AC and defences somehow necessitates a specific talent to make them relevant, the DM is doing a bad job.
Moreover, monsters (and players) should not be thinking in terms of hit points. To a monster, every creature can go down to one swing of the sword. They have no idea how durable anyone is, just as the players don't know monster hit points. To metagame this way, either for the DM or the players, is ultimately going to give a poorer experience. "Take out the casters" is perfectly viable, unless there is a knight in your face dealing you two hits a turn with a warhammer.
An effective tank isn't a character that is hard ot hit / or hard ot kill, it is one that also draws the attacks to them. In many MMORPGs there is some sort of taunting mechanic. D&D doesn't have such a system so effective tanking i s probably harder but there are things like you can do for example
If they draw the enemies to them, and are not hard to hit or kill, they are not an effective tank.
You're essentially suggesting that unless a high AC, high saving throw character spends their time grappling and shoving then all the enemies should run past them and attack someone else. This is the point where you should be playing an MMORPG on a PC rather than an RPG.
You don’t decide how a monster acts, the DM does. The monsters (especially intelligent ones) can do whatever they want as per DM fiat. Expecting “I wield a hammer so bad guys should definitely target me because I’m dangerous” is video-game thinking. This is not a video game.
This idea that monsters don’t know things like durability is an assumption about a game that has an intelligent game master that can play the creatures however they want. That’s the beauty of playing a role playing game vs a video game, where your expectations are subverted and you have to adapt to the game that the DM runs.
edit: to add, yes you don’t need Sentinel. The idea of a “tank” is definitely misconstrued to be a WoW kind of concept, and that’s weird. There is no such thing as drawing aggro and there’s no such thing as a role that a DM has to follow. If the enemies ignore the heavily armoured dude with a hammer and hit the mage, they can. You’ll get an extra opp attack each round as they continue to try and engage the mage, so that’s up to you to use the battlefield in whatever way you can and make those shots hurt.
Sentinel should not be a key part of every melee class's build, but it is certainly the best way to keep them near you. But it's at best one creature. If having high AC and defences somehow necessitates a specific talent to make them relevant, the DM is doing a bad job.
Moreover, monsters (and players) should not be thinking in terms of hit points. To a monster, every creature can go down to one swing of the sword. They have no idea how durable anyone is, just as the players don't know monster hit points. To metagame this way, either for the DM or the players, is ultimately going to give a poorer experience. "Take out the casters" is perfectly viable, unless there is a knight in your face dealing you two hits a turn with a warhammer.
An effective tank isn't a character that is hard ot hit / or hard ot kill, it is one that also draws the attacks to them. In many MMORPGs there is some sort of taunting mechanic. D&D doesn't have such a system so effective tanking i s probably harder but there are things like you can do for example
If they draw the enemies to them, and are not hard to hit or kill, they are not an effective tank.
You're essentially suggesting that unless a high AC, high saving throw character spends their time grappling and shoving then all the enemies should run past them and attack someone else. This is the point where you should be playing an MMORPG on a PC rather than an RPG.
I agree most of what Brewski said, you can be an effective high AC, High saving throw character without sentinal, you can also be an effective high AC, High saving throw character without being a tank. In MMORPG terms they would be melee DPS with a lot of survivability.
"Tank" is a MMORPG term used ot describe a character that draws all the attacks to them but is able to resists them, in such games there really no intelligent monster as they all attack the player that taunts them the most. In D&D your options on trying to "taunt" creatures to attack you are limited. Against unintegent monsters just getting close to them is likely to be enough. As a DM I would not have a wolf run away from the paladin to attack the wizard even though it could easily be argued that wolves will tend to attack the weakest prey.
Creatures with a reasonable intelligence will realise that the person in full plate armor is going to be harder to hit than the person with none (though they will likely be aware that people going into combat with no armor will likely have some sort of magical defence) those that are used to combat will, through experiance know roughly how effective there attacks will be against different types of armor. You can either think of "hits" as wounds (That is a hardy looking guy in plate armor, I might manage to get through his armor with 1 attack in 3 and it wil take on average 5 hits to wound him enough so he goes unconcious) or in terms of wearing someone out (on average it will take about 15 swings of my sword before I manage to take him out)
Their knowledge will not be perfect if a creature has never encounters a paladin before they will likely not know how effective they are against saves ("He looks big and strong but probably a bit slow so I'll cast call lightning) it is up to the DM to decide how much the NPCs would know (and the players to decide how much their characters would know)
The great thing with D&D is you can do anything, if the paladin says something very insulting about the enemies mother the DM can then decide what impact that has, he might for example say if the paladin uses a bonus action to to say it he can make an intimidation check and if it succeed the enemy will focus all his attacks on the paladin on his next turn.
Moreover, monsters (and players) should not be thinking in terms of hit points. To a monster, every creature can go down to one swing of the sword. They have no idea how durable anyone is, just as the players don't know monster hit points. To metagame this way, either for the DM or the players, is ultimately going to give a poorer experience. "Take out the casters" is perfectly viable, unless there is a knight in your face dealing you two hits a turn with a warhammer.
Since first edition, it's been a core mainstay of D&D reality that you always target the most naked opponent you have. It's less true in 5E now that it's so trivial for wizards to wear lots of armor, but it's still an excellent guideline: if you're fighting a set of humanoids, and they have people in plate armor in front and people in robes in the back, kill the ones in robes first. That's the most elementary of elementary rules of survival in any D&D world, just as it is in the real world, although the reasons differ slightly.
You can generally assume anything fighting you rather than running away has been in a fight before and lived through it. That means anything not wearing armor doesn't need it, and anything not carrying a weapon doesn't need it. That makes it orders of magnitude more dangerous, not less.
Note also that if it has a greatsword, you know how it's probably going to murder you. An unarmed opponent is an unknown quantity, which is already more dangerous.
Regardless of enemy competency, you want to reduce enemy numbers as quickly as possible. It's at least plausible that the targets wearing less armor are easier to hit and therefore kill, which means you should try to hit and kill them. You always want to kill the easiest to kill targets first - use your context clues.
D&D only: spellcasters exist, and most of them don't wear plate. A fresh spellcaster is more dangerous than a fresh martial, because martials are better at endurance combat and spellcasters are better at burst combat. You need the spellcasters dead now - a martial "nova" might consist of a bucket of damage, but that spellcaster's nova can be a summon. Or worse.
In any D&D campaign, unless my character is fresh off the boat, if I'm fighting humanoids, I ask what my opponents are wearing, and then I try to kill the most naked first. It's a good policy, and it keeps me alive.
Way back when I was playing and DMing in the first edition of AD&D, it was assumed that given any chance, the monster would go after what it decided the lowest threat was. That was usually that Magic User, but it depended on how smart the monster was, and what it considered the least threatening. It might not have any idea that a Magic User was dangerous until after it got roasted.
Thus, you needed a "tank." At the time, the Fighter and the Paladin made the best choice. Remember that things like Barbarians weren't around at first, and the same is true about Cavaliers and the Cavalier Paladin. There were no rules for taunting, but back then, it didn't matter, because in order for the game to be any fun, DMs usually just let the tank stop everything. The only exception was the DM's who wanted to be "realistic" and that's fine, as long as everyone has fun.
In the current version of the game, pretty much all classes have higher hit points except Fighters and Paladins.They have been a d10 class all along. Barbarians have always been a d12, so it's the same thing there.
Bounded Accuracy makes high defenses of any kind less useful, because a Critical Hit does more damage, and you always get that with a "natural 20." You only get three attacks yourself, there's generally more monsters than there are players in any given encounter, and over the course of the game, the player characters are going to get into a lot of fights, so they will take way more critical hits than they could ever hope to dish out.
It has been pretty much established that the best tank in the game is the Path of the Ancestral Guardian Barbarian. Next up, they say it's the Cavalier, because while the concept of the class is that they are supposed to just be superior horsemen, nothing says they have to be mounted to use their abilities, and they have some great ones for tanking, like Unwavering Mark at 3rd level, Warding Maneuver at 7th, Hold the Line at 10th, and so on.
I really don't know where Paladins fit into the picture, but it's generally agreed that they make excellent tanks.
The game now has rules that help anyone of any class be better at tanking. I mentioned Goading attack, it's a kind of weak taunt. There are lots of others that people have brought up. In the end, a Yuan Ti Paladin with the Oath of the Ancients is just utterly awesome as a tank, they are really hard to hit, and when you do hit them, they can heal themselves a bit, their resistance to magic is overpowered, and almost everyone knows that from the start. Yuan-Ti and Satyrs are among the most frequently complained about races available.
I mentioned earlier some ways to get around a Yuan Ti Paladin with the Oath of the Ancients that you don't want around. My advice is to not to allow Yuan-Ti in your games.
Moreover, monsters (and players) should not be thinking in terms of hit points. To a monster, every creature can go down to one swing of the sword. They have no idea how durable anyone is, just as the players don't know monster hit points. To metagame this way, either for the DM or the players, is ultimately going to give a poorer experience. "Take out the casters" is perfectly viable, unless there is a knight in your face dealing you two hits a turn with a warhammer.
Since first edition, it's been a core mainstay of D&D reality that you always target the most naked opponent you have. It's less true in 5E now that it's so trivial for wizards to wear lots of armor, but it's still an excellent guideline: if you're fighting a set of humanoids, and they have people in plate armor in front and people in robes in the back, kill the ones in robes first. That's the most elementary of elementary rules of survival in any D&D world, just as it is in the real world, although the reasons differ slightly.
You can generally assume anything fighting you rather than running away has been in a fight before and lived through it. That means anything not wearing armor doesn't need it, and anything not carrying a weapon doesn't need it. That makes it orders of magnitude more dangerous, not less.
Note also that if it has a greatsword, you know how it's probably going to murder you. An unarmed opponent is an unknown quantity, which is already more dangerous.
Regardless of enemy competency, you want to reduce enemy numbers as quickly as possible. It's at least plausible that the targets wearing less armor are easier to hit and therefore kill, which means you should try to hit and kill them. You always want to kill the easiest to kill targets first - use your context clues.
D&D only: spellcasters exist, and most of them don't wear plate. A fresh spellcaster is more dangerous than a fresh martial, because martials are better at endurance combat and spellcasters are better at burst combat. You need the spellcasters dead now - a martial "nova" might consist of a bucket of damage, but that spellcaster's nova can be a summon. Or worse.
In any D&D campaign, unless my character is fresh off the boat, if I'm fighting humanoids, I ask what my opponents are wearing, and then I try to kill the most naked first. It's a good policy, and it keeps me alive.
That's a good policy for player characters, but for bandits and other hostile humanoids, it's important to remember that most of the time they will not be facing adventurer parties. Usually, a person who's unarmored is going to be a peasant, merchant, scholar, or some other variety of non-threatening individual. And even when they are a wizard, most wizards are likely to focus their spellcasting on things that help with their arcane research projects or are saleable or otherwise are something other than new and interesting ways to make someone's internal organs suddenly become external.
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Find your own truth, choose your enemies carefully, and never deal with a dragon.
"Canon" is what's factual to D&D lore. "Cannon" is what you're going to be shot with if you keep getting the word wrong.
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In a campaign there is a Yuan Ti Paladin oath of the ancients and they aren't fazed by anything. They have an AC of 19 and their lowest saving throw is a +5, not to mention they have Adv against saving throws from magical effects and all damage they receive from spells is halved (level 8 Aura of Warding). Immunity to poison and the poison condition. They can reach even higher Ac if they use spells or get better armor. Usually the tactic to a high Ac target is to hit them with saving throws and vice versa, but this paladin seems to have it all. Any advice on what I can do?
Use monsters with special abilities (and therefore not spells). 19 AC even with shield of faith is not insurmountable. My paladin has AC 22 with SoF and he still gets hit all the time. If you throw a lot of smaller monsters at him, there will be a lot more attack rolls and therefore some of them will also crit. Set traps with a high DC in his weakest stat, use surprise, use invisibility or darkness to give disadvantage. You can also augment your monsters with higher hit/spell save DC (they don't have to be right from the book). You can also ignore the paladin and go hard after the rest of the party. This will force the paladin to maybe react and heal instead of hitting hard like he wants to. Basically just be creative with your monsters.
There are a number of creatures that have abilities that aren’t actually magical. You could also use effects that deal half damage on successful saves. Most breath weapons are examples of this, but there are more. It’s quite interesting that the lowest save bonus is a +5 considering point buy or standard array attribute options. If the players rolled for stats, then this is pretty much what happens when bounded accuracy is ignored. Another option could be to use more checks in the game that have different results, but making use of ability checks will have to be presented in a different way as it’s usually the players choice to make the check in the first place. Unless they are subjected to a contest. You could introduce terrain hazards that damage or slow down the party, it may squeeze out another round or two of combat if positioning becomes difficult.
all that being said this needs to be carefully thought off. You want to provide a challenge to the party, including the paladin. You don’t want to raise the difficulty of the monsters entirely as that just makes the rest of the party more likely to fail or get hurt when they’re targeted. You also don’t want to invalidate the players choices. If they wanted to have a PC with decent armor and great save potential, and have dedicated time and resources to make those choices then there should be some reward for it.
Paladins get that aura that lets them and all allies with 10 feet of them add their Charisma mod to all saves, and with a +2 racial bonus to Charisma they could easily have a Charisma of 20 by 8th level.
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Thats exactly it yea, their lowest save is Dex at a +5 bc they have a 20 in Charisma.
Monsters like Carrion Crawler can be useful. This one might have a low CR, but it's an example. Even at that CR, +8 to hit. This one also relies on the poison which the Paladin seems immune to, so maybe search a different option. Quickling also has incredibly high to-hit considering their low CR.
You could also go on the defensive, putting two tanks in front of each other. Will-o'-Wisp looks weak, but it's rather hard to kill. If you REALLY want to TPK with low CR monsters, pair it with a Banshee. Banshee reduces to 0 HP, Will-o'-Wisp confirms the kill. Both have great defensive powers too.
Another option is to put a timed challenge. Maybe the goal of the fight isn't to kill all monsters before they kill you, but rather kill all monsters before X happens. Or guard some weak NPC. Things that mean that it doesn't matter if the Paladin has AC of 19, 2000 or 0. Getting hit is not the problem in this encounter.
Last option is an enemy which relies on checks. Maybe there's a giant on a narrow bridge, shoving everyone that tries to cross down a chasm. Maybe the foe is an illusion that is only defeated when the party makes an Investigation check to realise that it is an illusion. The illusion can't deal damage, but you can just say it fails to hit that high AC. When it is hit, find a way to subtly hint that something is wrong without giving it away immediately. What's the risk to the party then, if the illusion deals no damage? They might spend resources on it and be weakened when they reach the ine who created the illusion. Someone they should be able to beat easily with enough resources, but a hard encounter otherwise.
Varielky
So first up, what level is this character? They must be 8+ but these things you're describing will be more or less relevant at different levels.
19 AC really isn't that high. I played an Eldritch Knight who had AC 21 at level 6. I'm going to assume AC 19 is Plate plus Defence fighting style so they can use a 2h weapon.
I'm also going to assume that this paladin is level 8. By that point your party can easily be facing off against monsters that have +10 to hit, and should have multiple attacks, with save DCs of 15+.
However, the player has clearly made choices - class, race, stats, armour - that are making them highly durable. Part of their play experience should be that they don't take a lot of damage. If you build a tanky melee character then they ought to be tanky. My old DM used to get around my AC21 character by simply ignoring him, taking the opportunity attack, and running creatures around him. It didn't make sense for them to be ignoring a hammer wielding fighter in their faces, but he basically gave up on making melee attacks against me (especially as I could up my AC to 26 with shield (and usually had protection from evil and good up for disadvantage. This was deeply annoying for me as a player. I'd built my character around being the party tank, and the DM effectively took the role away from me by deciding to make intelligent monsters act irrationally. Since I also had absorb elements, the only time he was hitting me was with effects like psychic damage. [Side note: because the DM gave up on attacking me, I ended up always having those spells available since I didn't need to burn my spell slots. If he'd put the focus intensely on my EK, he could have burned through my resources, making me more vulnerable in the next encounter].
If your player wants to be super tough and durable then don't try to get around it to damage him. Lean into it. So it's hard to hit him? Put more monsters into the encounter and let him tank them. Put in an additional caster monster so that it can throw wasteful spells into the yuan-ti resistances. If your PC is proving tougher than the standard CR will allow this is normal. CR is badly calculated, all the monsters have half the hit points they need (look at how to calculate CR in the DMG, and then look at monsters in the MM and you'll find they're almost all wrong).
The bane of most Paladins is lots of foes, preferebly at range and/or flying. A dozen kobolds that run around peppering them with arrows and then retreating will cause enough problems. Flying enemies or enemies that aren't slowed by the terrain is also useful. Paladins aren't good at ranged combat and they are also not as good against multiple opponents so this should be at least a nuisance to the Paladin.
With non-magical Plate armor and a non-magical shield, you'd have an armor class of 20. Their armor class is lower. They don't have magical armor at 8th level?
As far as doing damage to them goes, have a monster that flies pick them up and drop them from a height. There's no save for falling damage. They are probably wearing armor of some kind, so drop them into deep water instead and see if they can swim.
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I have to disagree that your DM decided to make intelligen monsters act irrationally. An intellignet enemy that knows any attacks against you are unlikely to succeed will want to take down the wizard that might be doing a similar abount of damage but can be taken down with one or 2 swipes of the sword, after taking care of squishy targets can then take on the paladin when they only need to worry about his attacks.
An effective tank isn't a character that is hard ot hit / or hard ot kill, it is one that also draws the attacks to them. In many MMORPGs there is some sort of taunting mechanic. D&D doesn't have such a system so effective tanking i s probably harder but there are things like you can do for example
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7 living bigby's hands (reminder that creatures manifested by spells aren't spells - Aura of Warding does nothing against the beast summoned by Summon Beast, so it should do nothing against the hand; same thing for the yuan-ti advantage on re-rolls).
D&D does have a "taunting mechanic" of sorts. Fighters with the Battle Master subclass get it, and you can get a somewhat lesser version that doesn't scales with leveling with the Martial Adept feat.
Goading Attack
When you hit a creature with a weapon attack, you can expend one superiority die to attempt to goad the target into attacking you. You add the superiority die to the attack’s damage roll, and the target must make a Wisdom saving throw. On a failed save, the target has disadvantage on all attack rolls against targets other than you until the end of your next turn.
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Goading attack is another way in D&D a tank can reduce the chances of his squishy friends getting hurt (either because they attack the paladin or they attack the squishy with disadvantage, in a similar way to sentinal does (with sentinal they can attanged ranged at disadvantage with goading attack they can go to them and hit them melee at disadvantage)
There are quite a few others
A Paladin only really has compelled duel that that has quite a few restrictions, most notably if your friiends attack the target the effect ends.
Thinking about it I think there is a space for an "Oath of Protection" Paladin sworn to protect his colleagues in battle.
Your points are illogical on multiple levels.
Sentinel should not be a key part of every melee class's build, but it is certainly the best way to keep them near you. But it's at best one creature. If having high AC and defences somehow necessitates a specific talent to make them relevant, the DM is doing a bad job.
Moreover, monsters (and players) should not be thinking in terms of hit points. To a monster, every creature can go down to one swing of the sword. They have no idea how durable anyone is, just as the players don't know monster hit points. To metagame this way, either for the DM or the players, is ultimately going to give a poorer experience. "Take out the casters" is perfectly viable, unless there is a knight in your face dealing you two hits a turn with a warhammer.
An effective tank isn't a character that is hard ot hit / or hard ot kill, it is one that also draws the attacks to them. In many MMORPGs there is some sort of taunting mechanic. D&D doesn't have such a system so effective tanking i s probably harder but there are things like you can do for example
If they draw the enemies to them, and are not hard to hit or kill, they are not an effective tank.
You're essentially suggesting that unless a high AC, high saving throw character spends their time grappling and shoving then all the enemies should run past them and attack someone else. This is the point where you should be playing an MMORPG on a PC rather than an RPG.
You don’t decide how a monster acts, the DM does. The monsters (especially intelligent ones) can do whatever they want as per DM fiat. Expecting “I wield a hammer so bad guys should definitely target me because I’m dangerous” is video-game thinking. This is not a video game.
This idea that monsters don’t know things like durability is an assumption about a game that has an intelligent game master that can play the creatures however they want. That’s the beauty of playing a role playing game vs a video game, where your expectations are subverted and you have to adapt to the game that the DM runs.
edit: to add, yes you don’t need Sentinel. The idea of a “tank” is definitely misconstrued to be a WoW kind of concept, and that’s weird. There is no such thing as drawing aggro and there’s no such thing as a role that a DM has to follow. If the enemies ignore the heavily armoured dude with a hammer and hit the mage, they can. You’ll get an extra opp attack each round as they continue to try and engage the mage, so that’s up to you to use the battlefield in whatever way you can and make those shots hurt.
I agree most of what Brewski said, you can be an effective high AC, High saving throw character without sentinal, you can also be an effective high AC, High saving throw character without being a tank. In MMORPG terms they would be melee DPS with a lot of survivability.
"Tank" is a MMORPG term used ot describe a character that draws all the attacks to them but is able to resists them, in such games there really no intelligent monster as they all attack the player that taunts them the most. In D&D your options on trying to "taunt" creatures to attack you are limited. Against unintegent monsters just getting close to them is likely to be enough. As a DM I would not have a wolf run away from the paladin to attack the wizard even though it could easily be argued that wolves will tend to attack the weakest prey.
Creatures with a reasonable intelligence will realise that the person in full plate armor is going to be harder to hit than the person with none (though they will likely be aware that people going into combat with no armor will likely have some sort of magical defence) those that are used to combat will, through experiance know roughly how effective there attacks will be against different types of armor. You can either think of "hits" as wounds (That is a hardy looking guy in plate armor, I might manage to get through his armor with 1 attack in 3 and it wil take on average 5 hits to wound him enough so he goes unconcious) or in terms of wearing someone out (on average it will take about 15 swings of my sword before I manage to take him out)
Their knowledge will not be perfect if a creature has never encounters a paladin before they will likely not know how effective they are against saves ("He looks big and strong but probably a bit slow so I'll cast call lightning) it is up to the DM to decide how much the NPCs would know (and the players to decide how much their characters would know)
The great thing with D&D is you can do anything, if the paladin says something very insulting about the enemies mother the DM can then decide what impact that has, he might for example say if the paladin uses a bonus action to to say it he can make an intimidation check and if it succeed the enemy will focus all his attacks on the paladin on his next turn.
Since first edition, it's been a core mainstay of D&D reality that you always target the most naked opponent you have. It's less true in 5E now that it's so trivial for wizards to wear lots of armor, but it's still an excellent guideline: if you're fighting a set of humanoids, and they have people in plate armor in front and people in robes in the back, kill the ones in robes first. That's the most elementary of elementary rules of survival in any D&D world, just as it is in the real world, although the reasons differ slightly.
In any D&D campaign, unless my character is fresh off the boat, if I'm fighting humanoids, I ask what my opponents are wearing, and then I try to kill the most naked first. It's a good policy, and it keeps me alive.
To the OP, a divination wizard who uses their portent to dominate the pally. Make him a problem for the rest of the party.
Way back when I was playing and DMing in the first edition of AD&D, it was assumed that given any chance, the monster would go after what it decided the lowest threat was. That was usually that Magic User, but it depended on how smart the monster was, and what it considered the least threatening. It might not have any idea that a Magic User was dangerous until after it got roasted.
Thus, you needed a "tank." At the time, the Fighter and the Paladin made the best choice. Remember that things like Barbarians weren't around at first, and the same is true about Cavaliers and the Cavalier Paladin. There were no rules for taunting, but back then, it didn't matter, because in order for the game to be any fun, DMs usually just let the tank stop everything. The only exception was the DM's who wanted to be "realistic" and that's fine, as long as everyone has fun.
In the current version of the game, pretty much all classes have higher hit points except Fighters and Paladins.They have been a d10 class all along. Barbarians have always been a d12, so it's the same thing there.
Bounded Accuracy makes high defenses of any kind less useful, because a Critical Hit does more damage, and you always get that with a "natural 20." You only get three attacks yourself, there's generally more monsters than there are players in any given encounter, and over the course of the game, the player characters are going to get into a lot of fights, so they will take way more critical hits than they could ever hope to dish out.
It has been pretty much established that the best tank in the game is the Path of the Ancestral Guardian Barbarian. Next up, they say it's the Cavalier, because while the concept of the class is that they are supposed to just be superior horsemen, nothing says they have to be mounted to use their abilities, and they have some great ones for tanking, like Unwavering Mark at 3rd level, Warding Maneuver at 7th, Hold the Line at 10th, and so on.
I really don't know where Paladins fit into the picture, but it's generally agreed that they make excellent tanks.
The game now has rules that help anyone of any class be better at tanking. I mentioned Goading attack, it's a kind of weak taunt. There are lots of others that people have brought up. In the end, a Yuan Ti Paladin with the Oath of the Ancients is just utterly awesome as a tank, they are really hard to hit, and when you do hit them, they can heal themselves a bit, their resistance to magic is overpowered, and almost everyone knows that from the start. Yuan-Ti and Satyrs are among the most frequently complained about races available.
I mentioned earlier some ways to get around a Yuan Ti Paladin with the Oath of the Ancients that you don't want around. My advice is to not to allow Yuan-Ti in your games.
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That's a good policy for player characters, but for bandits and other hostile humanoids, it's important to remember that most of the time they will not be facing adventurer parties. Usually, a person who's unarmored is going to be a peasant, merchant, scholar, or some other variety of non-threatening individual. And even when they are a wizard, most wizards are likely to focus their spellcasting on things that help with their arcane research projects or are saleable or otherwise are something other than new and interesting ways to make someone's internal organs suddenly become external.
Find your own truth, choose your enemies carefully, and never deal with a dragon.
"Canon" is what's factual to D&D lore. "Cannon" is what you're going to be shot with if you keep getting the word wrong.